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Building Heterotopias / Rather than read about conventional ways of using wikimedia in education, we are going to look to the opportunities of speculative fiction for collaborative world-building - and for developing critical literacies (by exploring the opportunities wikimedia tools while also leveraging speculative fabulation for a re/imagining of educational 'realities' and futures, or for creating encyclopedias of an alternative world).
EDUC 5860: Wikimedia Speculative Fabulation/Theory Forum
• ‘As a literary genre, speculative fiction probes readers and writers to consider “provocative divergences from the norms of human biology, the conventions of human society, and the limitations of human thought” (Milburn 2012, p. 525).’ cited in SE Truman
• 'Speculative fictions describe many dystopic worlds brought on by the integration of new technologies including human-alien interspecies mating, bio-warfare, and human–machine (cyborg) integration. These dystopias are often depicted as manifesting concomitant with the global market expansion of late capitalism, hyper-media, environmental degradation, genetic engineering, and neo-Imperialism.' SE Truman
What if…? What might the future of 'education' and 'learning' look like?
The aim of this collaborative project is to, in small groups, engage speculative (educational) theory in order to think about possible 'educational futures’ and/or the impacts of technology, ecology, and/or other events (see the concept of the Novum, the Black Swan event, or just look at Covid19).
How might we examine current trends or states-of-affairs in the world today (technology-driven, political, environmental, etc) and take a look at current states of affairs in schools, teaching/learning, pedagogy, educational policy, technology use, and media culture - and then 'extrapolate' to imagine possible impacts, future events, and future states of affairs? Why is the work of looking forward and imagining possibility and 'theorizing' important? Most importantly, how does a 'speculative' educational theory help us imagine possible futures (to cautiously avoid... or eventuate: 'inspire readers to speculate on what needs to be done in the present to arrive at an alternative future’).
What do you imagine it will feel like to learn in the future? What will ‘teaching’, ‘schooling’ or ‘learning’ look like (if current challenges and problems are not deal with, or if radical 'innovations' or technologies or pedagogies applied? For example, will we learn alone, in a community, in what contexts/roles? What will be the role of technology in learning – in relation to pedagogy? What will be the fate of (current) institutions? What are the 'ecological' or systemic relations between educational/learning worlds and events/innovations/states of affairs in the world?
In small groups (3-4 people), using the models/resources from class as a starting point, you will be imagining a possible future of (or alternative world) for via 'science fiction' storytelling.
Expectations: Use science/speculative fiction world-building techniques and processes of extrapolation, etc, (covered in class) to imagine some future of education and or learning.
To begin, you need to identify the larger/over-reaching problems facing education, schools and youth today – and then consider a future condition or “state of affairs” in relation to the challenges or current problems, challenges, or opportunities – be them, sociocultural, ecological, institutional (schools, politics, workplaces), pedagogical and/or technological.
Tip: Consider the conditional term: “What if …?”
Tip: Revisit concepts like ‘Extrapolation’ and the Novum -- and feel free to explore the specific critical affordances of both dystopian and utopian and heterotopian modes of art/storytelling (to make critical points about learning, schooling, education, and technology today, through looking into the ‘mirror’ of possible futures).
Tip: You can start anywhere or with anything: with a technology (e.g., VR, Siri, 'robots', surveillance, bio-genetics, and other 'usual suspects') - or you can start with significant pedagogical and social justice challenges (disability, inclusion, inequity, etc).
Tip Have fun with genre conventions like time travel or counter-factual history or things like the Novum. Consider critical literary tools that have been used throughout the history of utopian/dystopian art and literature: satire and irony.
Be sure to include contextualizing details for your world-building (Where/when is this imagined world taking place).
Optional Genres or Narrative Conceits: In constructng your alternative or future world, consider using – or mixing – genres like:
• Wikipedia ‘encyclopedic’ mode for telling your story through Wiki discourse conventions.
• A wiki museum of ‘found artefacts' (e.g., present documents like memoir/diary, maps, photos, news-clippings, text messages, social media posts, etc ‘taken’ from that alternative history/future).
• Literary Modes: Third Person or embodied First-Person narrative accounts (e.g., through ‘the eyes’ of people living in this imagined world).
• Mix up these genres – or devise variations – or figure out a new way to present your world/story.
Counterfactual History Option: A historical ‘what if’ (twisting the past) that changes our present (= we live in an alternative timeline in the present). The most famous counterfactual historical point of departure: “What if Nazi Germany won WWII”? Consider an educational counterfactual (e.g., What if Edgerton Ryerson opposed, instead of promoted, cultural genocide through residential schooling systems?)
Formal Expectations:
• Genre: See above. Up to you as a group to use one or more genres - or decide on how to mix up genres.
• Length: Minimum 1750-2000 words / 3000 MAX! (for a three person group). Add some images that show aspects of the world, or reflect key themes, technologies, ideas, etc.
• Truman states: SFs offer us generative practices for imagining a different future, but they must be grounded in 'response-ability' for the worlds we inherit and create. Just keep this in mind as you being to speculate and do world-building.
• Ensure that your alter/future world-building either ‘extrapolates' in ways that help us thinking critically about the present and the future, cautions us to (dystopain) perils embedded in our present world/system, and/or 'invite readers to speculate on what needs to be done in the present to arrive at an alternative future' (author)
• Try to have some fun! And don't worry if it gets weird, out there, that is fine.
For class discussion, at some point (last day of class, possibly), I will ask you to be able to reflect and evaluate on this project: was it valuable? What process did you go through to arrive at your 'problematic' and then create your world? What extra-course literary/film or theory resources did you use? Did/how did the project connect to any course themes (e.g., technology-pedagogy)?
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